The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka Read Free Book Online Page B

Sometimes, in the late afternoon, just as the light was beginning to fade, we took out his yellowing photograph from our trunk and looked at it one last time. But no matter how hard we tried we could not make ourselves throw it away.
    A NUMBER OF US found ourselves hunched over their galvanized tin washtubs on our third day in America, quietly scrubbing their things: stained pillowcases and bed-sheets, soiled handkerchiefs, dirty collars, white lace slips so lovely we thought they should be worn over, and not under. We worked in basement laundries in Japantowns in the most run-down sections of their cities—San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, L.A.—and every morning we rose before dawn with our husbands and we washed and we boiled and we scrubbed. And at night when we put down our brushes and climbed into bed we dreamed we were still washing, as we would every night for years. And even though we had not come all the way to America to live in a tiny, curtained-off room at the back of the Royal Hand Laundry, we knew we could not go home. If you come home , our fathers had written to us, you will disgrace the entire family. If you come home your younger sisters will never marry. If you come home no man will ever have you again . And so we stayed in J-town with our new husbands, and grew old before our time.
    IN J-TOWN we rarely saw them at all. We waited tables seven days a week at our husbands’ lunch counters and noodle shops, where we knew all the regulars by heart. Yamamoto-san. Natsuhara-san. Eto-san, Kodami-san. We cleaned the rooms of our husbands’ cheap boardinghouses, and twice a day we cooked meals for their guests, who looked just like ourselves. We bought our groceries at Fujioka Grocery, where they sold all the things we remembered from home: green leaf tea, Mitsuwa soap, incense, pickled plums, fresh tofu, dried seaweed to help fend off goiters and cold. We bought bootleg sake for our husbands at the pool hall beneath the brothel on the corner of Third and Main, but made sure to put on our white aprons first so we would not be mistaken for whores in the alley. We bought our dresses at Yada Ladies’ Shop and our shoes at Asahi Shoe, where the shoes actually came in our size. We bought our face cream at Tenshodo Drug. We went to the public bathhouse every Saturday and gossiped with our neighbors and friends. Was it true that Kisayo refused to let her husband enter the house through the front door? Had Mikiko really run away with a card dealer from the Toyo Club? And what had Hagino done to her hair? It looks like a rat’s nest . We went to Yoshinaga’s Dental Clinic for our toothaches, and for our back and knee pains we went to Dr. Hayano, the acupuncturist, who also knew the art of shiatsu massage. And whenever we needed advice in matters of the heart— Should I leave him or should I stay?— we went to Mrs. Murata, the fortune-teller, who lived in the blue house on Second Street above Asakawa Pawn, and we sat with her in her kitchen with our heads bowed and our hands on our knees while we waited for her to receive a message from the gods. If you leave him now there will be no other . And all of this took place on a four-block-long stretch of town that was more Japanese than the village we’d left behind in Japan. If I close my eyes I don’t even know I’m living in a foreign land .
    WHENEVER WE LEFT J-town and wandered through the broad, clean streets of their cities we tried not to draw attention to ourselves. We dressed like they did. We walked like they did. We made sure not to travel in large groups. We made ourselves small for them —If you stay in your place they’ll leave you alone —and did our best not to offend. Still, they gave us a hard time. Their men slapped our husbands on the back and shouted out, “So solly!” as they knocked off our husbands’ hats. Their children threw stones at us. Their waiters always served us last. Their ushers led us upstairs, to the second balconies